Huett given Heroism Award

The Huetts, a local family here in Excelsior Springs, nearly had a life altering experience last January but because of the quick thinking of their son Cameron, their family unit is still intact.

One early Saturday morning while Gary Huett, Cameron’s father, was still in bed Cameron—who is known as a thoughtful kid—went in to see if his dad would like a cup of coffee. Amy, Cameron’s mom, was piddling around the house doing her usual Saturday morning chores.

“There’s something wrong with Dad,” Amy explained, was is what she heard Cameron say as he came running out of the bedroom after he tried to wake up his dad. When Cameron went into his parents’ bedroom, his dad’s eyes were not open and his speech was slurred when he tried to respond to Cameron’s request.

“He’s not speaking clearly,” Cameron told his mom. “I think it’s his blood sugar.” Knowing that her husband has had type II diabetes for many years, Amy immediately grabbed his glucose tablets from the kitchen cabinet and both she and Cameron ran back to the bedroom. Gary wasn’t exactly unresponsive, but getting very close.

“I tried to get a glucose tablet into his mouth, but he could barely even get his mouth open,” Amy explained. “I told Cameron to run into the kitchen and grab a can of Coke. I told him to grab the phone and get ready to dial 9-1-1 because I wasn’t really sure if I was going to be able to get Gary to chew the tablet or not.”

Cameron listened to his mom’s directions without hesitation and stood by with the phone ready to do whatever it took to save his dad. Amy continued to tell her husband to chew the tablet. Gary would chew once and then quit, chew again and then quit.

“We both just kept telling him to chew, chew, chew. Finally, he did and little by little he started coming around,” they explained. “He was finally able to drink the Coke. When we checked his blood sugar shortly after, it was around 60, which is pretty low. That leads us to believe that his blood sugar at the time was probably only around 30 or so whenever Cameron found him.”

The mom and son team knew that if it hadn’t have been for Cameron’s quick response when he found his dad, they would have had to call 9-1-1. They both agreed that they are very thankful that things played out the way that they did.

“During the whole ordeal, Cameron remained calm and did everything I told him to do,” said Amy. “Shortly after the incident, we shared the experience with our cubmaster and began the paperwork to nominate Cameron for the Boy Scouts of America Heroism Award.”

Cameron is 10 years old. He joined local Cub Scout Pack 313 when he was in the third grade, making this his third year in the program, and he is a Webelo II. According to both his parents and his troop leaders he is very passionate about scouting and from the beginning he has set his mind to becoming an Eagle Scout one day.

As part of the nomination process for the heroism award the entire family, Gary, Amy and Cameron, had to submit in writing their versions of what had happened that Saturday morning. Following the nomination process the pack committee chairman and cubmaster also released statements about the event. Once everything was submitted to the local council, it was then reviewed all the way up to the national level.

The cubmaster received the award this week and presented it to Cameron during the pack meeting, which was held Tuesday evening. Committee chairman Tom Haight presented the award and talked to everyone about how participation in scouts prepares the boys for all the different events in life and how sometimes opportunities in life will come and the scouts will need to be able to apply their experience and use the things that they have learned. Haight explained that sometimes those experiences aren’t very pleasant, but still just as important. This is something the entire Huett family lived firsthand last January and was glad their son had learned from being a scout.